Blaze at the National Bank of Commerce
A kitchen fire at the Commercial Club leaves the building soaked and damaged.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The National Bank of Commerce building was damaged about $3,000 by fire and probably twice that amount by water this morning. The fire broke out in the kitchen of the Commercial Club on the fourth floor. The loss would have been much greater had it not been for the promptness of the fire department, which confined the fire to the fourth floor. Water soaked through most of the rooms beneath the club rooms and did considerable damage. The origin of the fire is unknown. New Year’s night, when the Commercial Club had its annual banquet, the electric lights were so arranged that someone thought there was a fire in the building and turned in an alarm, to which the department responded with a rush.
“Water soaked through most of the rooms beneath the club rooms and did considerable damage.”
Building fires were a constant terror in the dense, wood-heavy construction of 1890s downtown Tacoma. Today, modern fire codes and construction materials have shifted these risks, though the historic commercial blocks of downtown still face the constant pressure of preservation versus development.
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